The Missing Ones: An absolutely gripping thriller with a jaw-dropping twist (Detective Lottie Parker Book 1)

by Patricia Gibney

  ‘Find out the name of Sullivan’s doctor,’ she told Boyd.

  Hearing the click of high heels, she turned round to find Jane Dore standing behind her. Too close. Lottie’s spine tingled. She was more uncomfortable with the living than the dead. Get a grip, Parker.

  ‘I’m going to get a bite to eat. Would you like to join me?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Lottie, ‘DS Boyd and I have to get back to Ragmullin. Next time?’

  ‘I hope we don’t have a next time. If you follow me.’

  Lottie smiled. It was the other woman’s only attempt at any kind of humour.

  Nineteen

  The light was on, making it awkward to differentiate between day and night. Lottie assumed it was early afternoon judging by her rumbling stomach. They’d wasted no time getting back from Tullamore. She’d seen enough of the Dead House.

  Derek Harte sat in the windowless, airless interview room. He had been at James Brown’s house the night Brown died. He had called the emergency services and waited. Late thirties, straight brown hair cut tight above his ears and clean-shaven. His green eyes, submerged burnt-out embers, were lifeless in an ashen face. A masculine scent wafted from him and Lottie wondered if he were trying to shield his look of femininity with cologne. He wore the fragrance like it was meant for someone else. Beneath his black padded North Face jacket, the hood of a red sweatshirt nestled around his broad neck.

  Cameras and microphones embedded in the walls. DVD recorder on. Formalities over, Harte began. ‘James and I met last June.’ He closed his eyes at the memory and a whisper of a smile creased his thin lips.

  Lottie empathised with him. Fleeting memories, causing secret smiles and unbidden tears, could erupt at the most inopportune moments. She knew it too well.

  ‘Where did you meet him?’ she asked.

  ‘This is very delicate.’ He raised his eyes to meet hers.

  ‘Anything you say will be treated with the utmost confidence,’ she said, not quite believing her own words.

  ‘I met him through the internet. I’d been on this dating site for a while and never had the courage to engage with anyone. Until I came across James. He seemed nice, non-threatening, if you know what I mean.’

  Lottie nodded, not wanting to stop his flow of speech. Years of interviewing had honed her technique.

  ‘He looked normal. No airs or graces about him. I could tell that from his photograph and bio. I decided to email him and hit send before I could change my mind. He emailed me back. Wanted to meet up. I couldn’t believe he was interested in me.’

  Harte looked at Lottie and continued. ‘I work in a school sixty kilometres from here.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In Athlone.’

  ‘You met there?’

  ‘No. I felt we needed to be discreet so we met in a hotel in Tullamore.’

  ‘What did you talk about?’

  ‘Our jobs, mainly. How stressful they were; how we coped. We didn’t approach the subject of our sexuality. Not the first few times. I suppose you could call them dates but we were just like two friends having a drink at the bar watching football. But we never watched the football.’

  ‘How did the relationship develop?’ Lottie asked, when it appeared he was not continuing.

  ‘James invited me to his cottage. We had the most beautiful evening. He decorated the dining table with red roses and candles. I’d never experienced anything like it before. His attention to detail was exceptional. Things progressed from there.’

  ‘Progressed how?’ Lottie asked, keeping him talking.

  ‘We became lovers. We had a future ahead of us.’ Harte paused, eyes closed, then continued with an air of authority. ‘James was the quietest, most inoffensive person you could meet. I can’t understand why someone would do this to him. They destroyed his future. Our future.’

  ‘Mr Harte, at the moment we are still treating his death as a suicide.’

  ‘James had no reason to kill himself.’

  ‘Tell me about the pictures in his bedroom,’ Lottie said.

  ‘Just posters.’ He shrugged. ‘Heterosexual men put up calendars of women with their tits hanging out.’ He blushed. ‘Sorry, but it’s true. James liked his posters. There’s no law against it, is there?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘We were just two men in a relationship.’ His shoulders slumped.

  ‘Did you notice a tattoo on James’ thigh?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Did you ask him about it?’

  ‘He was very defensive. Told me it was none of my business. From a previous lifetime. That’s what he said. A previous lifetime.’

  ‘That’s all?’ Lottie asked.

  ‘This memory, whatever it was, seemed to cause him pain so I never mentioned it again.’

  Harte closed his eyes, breathing deeply.

  ‘Are you all right? Would you like a drink? Water? Coffee?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Were you with James for Christmas?’ Lottie moved the interview forward.

  ‘Yes. He drove through the snow on Christmas Eve to visit me. He was agitated, though. Annoyed that he couldn’t get back for some appointment that evening but the weather was so bad he had to stay with me.’

  ‘What appointment could he have had on Christmas Eve?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. But we got to spend Christmas Day together.’ Harte smiled. ‘It’s the happiest I’ve been since I stopped believing in Santa Claus.’

  ‘When did you last see him?’

  ‘St Stephen’s Day. He went home that day. He was returning to work on December twenty-seventh.’

  ‘Do you have a key to his cottage?’

  ‘No. There’s a place where he leaves it though.’

  ‘Where might that be?’

  ‘Under a stone, at the apple tree in the courtyard.’

  Lottie sighed. Was everyone just like her in relation to home security?

  ‘Could anyone else be aware of this?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Was it James’ key in the door last night?’

  ‘I presume so. I didn’t go near it,’ he said. After a moment he continued, his voice broken. ‘The minute I parked behind his car, I saw him. Hanging there.’

  ‘Did you see anyone else around? Other cars? Anyone pass you on the avenue or the main road?’

  ‘Nothing. I saw nothing, Inspector. Just James. Hanging there. Like . . . like . . . Oh God.’ He covered his mouth with his hands, resting his elbows on the table, swallowing a sob.

  Lottie wrote in her notebook, even though their conversation was being recorded. She needed to gather her thoughts.

  ‘Do you know if he owned a small green flashlight?’

  Harte shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Why were you at his house last night?’

  ‘We’d arranged to meet tonight . . . for New Year’s Eve, but then he phoned me about Susan Sullivan’s death. He sounded so upset.’

  ‘So you decided to drive through a snowstorm?’

  ‘Yes, Inspector, I did.’

  Lottie watched him. He appeared sincere.

  ‘Had his mood changed in recent times?’ she asked.

  Harte thought for a moment.

  ‘James told me a few months ago that Susan was diagnosed with cancer. He seemed to have known her a long time but I never met her. Once I asked if he’d introduce us. He didn’t.’

  ‘Did he tell you anything else about Susan?’

  ‘Only that she’d been through a lot in her life. He spoke as if he shared her troubles. James was like that. A sympathetic soul. Now that I think of it, he seemed obsessed with her at times.’

  ‘Any idea why?’

  ‘I imagine it was something to do with their work.’

  ‘What could that be?’

  ‘He was incensed by a vote on a council development plan. Kept saying he couldn’t believe they’d rezoned something or other. I don’t understand all that but
I’m sure it’d be easy for you to find out. It’s just a matter of knowing what to look for.’

  ‘And therein lies the crux of the matter,’ Lottie said, thinking of Kirby’s bulging face, having to trawl through a morass of planning files. ‘Do you have any idea when this was?’

  ‘Not sure. Possibly June or July. I honestly don’t know. It could be nothing, Inspector.’

  ‘Leave that for me to determine,’ she said. They had nothing already. What harm would another bit of nothing do?

  ‘I have so many regrets.’

  ‘I know the feeling,’ Lottie said. She thought of all she’d buried along with Adam, feelings she couldn’t cope with.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Harte. You can go,’ she said folding over her notebook, ‘but I’ll need to speak to you again.’

  ‘Any time,’ Harte said. He got up and walked out the door, wearing his jacket like a dead weight on his shoulders.

  When he was gone, his scent remained, wrestling the air around Lottie. A bitter smell of deep loss. She recognised it and hoped Harte could mourn, putting his grief behind him. She doubted it.

  And for some reason, despite all that, Lottie had a nagging doubt at his sincerity.

  Twenty

  ‘Will you sit down, Tom? You’re driving me insane.’

  Tom Rickard, property developer, continued pacing up and down the marble-floored kitchen, occasionally glancing at his wife Melanie. He was annoyed at his own stupidity over the call with James Brown. Even more annoyed with that detective inspector and her snooping. Melanie Rickard drained the dregs of her cabernet, went to the sink and rinsed the glass. She preferred white wine, so why had she opened his red? She was acting like a bitch because he cancelled their New Year’s Eve plans without consulting her.

  There was plenty of room for his pacing. Their kitchen was as large as the ground floor of a normal house. But their house was not normal. Nothing was normal where Melanie Rickard, his wife of twenty-one years, was concerned.

  ‘What’s bothering you anyway?’ She dried the glass, keeping her back to him.

  He didn’t answer. He knew she didn’t really want one. Melanie asked questions because she felt it was expected, not because she cared. She’d ceased caring about anything to do with him years ago. Of that he was sure.

  The wall clock ticked the evening away, adding to the turmoil raging in his head. Melanie wanted a party. She wanted another holiday. Her wardrobe was creaking with clothes bearing designer labels and expensive price tags. She wanted everything. She got everything. He had serviced her every whim. Not any more. Everything he had was sunk in the new project. A project fast drowning in quicksand. He was sinking with it. Suffocating himself with the noose of irrecoverable debt, and now two people were dead.

  He didn’t know what to do. So he kept pacing. Up and down their imported Italian green marble.

  When he looked up, Melanie was gone.

  He needed to talk to someone. He wanted his soulmate, to feel the comfort of her arms and legs around him.

  And his soulmate wasn’t Melanie.

  Rickard put on his coat, slipped his phone into the pocket and, wrapping a cashmere scarf about his neck, he swapped the warmth of his silent kitchen for the cold night air.

  Twenty-One

  Lottie stood outside Susan Sullivan’s house. Crime scene tapes floated in the arctic breeze. She nodded at the uniformed guards sitting in the squad car. It was going to be a long cold night. She hoped they had a flask of something hot with them. She’d ordered that the house be watched for a couple of days. Just in case anyone turned up.

  Darkness shrouded the house like a hooded cloak. All the surrounding homes were bathed in bright lights, some twinkling with week-old Christmas décor. She presumed the residents were chilling their champagne to ring in the new year. But the Sullivan house stood in mourning, dark windows reflecting light from the frozen snow lining the windowsills.

  Before leaving the station she’d updated the incident team on the pathologist’s reports and the Derek Harte interview. She left Boyd to mastermind the Jobs Book and Kirby was busy cross-referencing reports from the door-to-door enquiries. So far, nothing. No one had seen anything. Was Ragmullin the town of the deaf, blind and mute? What had happened to the valley of the squinting windows? No sign of any husband, boyfriend or even a girlfriend for Sullivan and they still hadn’t located her phone or laptop.

  With the team mired in paperwork, grumbling about it being New Year’s Eve and the parties they were missing, she had escaped. She needed fresh air and with the cold assaulting her she had meandered along the frozen footpaths through the town, drawn to Susan’s house. Experience told her there was a clue in this house. She just had to find it.

  She dipped under the tape and opened the door. Flicking on the hall light, she felt the house creak and a radiator rattled somewhere upstairs, then settled. The house was warm. Heat on a timer, she concluded. As she entered the kitchen a hum from the refrigerator sounded in an otherwise silent room.

  Looking around, Lottie wondered how it could be in such a state compared with the bedroom upstairs. It was as if two different people inhabited the house. Was Susan bipolar or schizophrenic or what? Could it be something to do with Susan’s childhood?

  When she opened the fridge, the internal light brightened up the kitchen. She pulled open the tiny freezer drawer at the top. Tubs of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream stared back at her. Neatly lined up, never to be eaten.

  She closed the drawer and looked through the rest of the fridge. Half a block of red cheese, hardened at the edges. Milk and the remains of a red onion. Unopened packet of sliced ham and two bars of chocolate. Behind the milk, a carton of orange juice. The tray in the bottom held green peppers and half a head of cabbage.

  Before she closed the door, she opened the freezer drawer again. Removing the ice cream tubs she noticed a bag of ice. It was a plastic freezer bag, with paper inside. Pulling on a pair of latex gloves, she extracted the bag. Frozen solid. Through the frost she could see it was cash. The top note was a fifty. Jesus, if they were all fifties, there must be at least two thousand euro in it. More even. What was Susan Sullivan doing hiding money in her freezer? A holiday fund? But why would she have one of those if she was dying? Lottie wanted to count it but she’d have to wait until it defrosted.

  Kirby and Lynch! How did they miss this? What else had they missed?

  She looked around for something in which to carry the frozen package, then decided it’d be sensible to leave it where she found it. Forensics would need to examine it.

  Returning the bag of money to the fridge, Lottie closed the door. At the window she pulled down the blinds and switched on the light. She looked in all the cupboards. Old-style teak, caked in grease. Noticing nothing else unusual, she switched off the light and closed the kitchen door.

  Glancing into the sitting room at the stacks of yellowing newspapers, she quelled an urge to look through them. They would probably reveal nothing of interest to their investigation, only a collection of clutter fulfilling an obsessive mind. Beyond their columns, she surveyed the room. A television, two armchairs and a fireplace. Then it hit her, what had been at the back of her mind when she first checked out the house.

  It was a blank postcard. Picture on one side, nothing on the other. A house devoid of human things. Things people collected over time, things that reflected their life. Things that told you who they were, where they had been, how they lived. No books to tell you what Susan read, no photographs of people she knew or places she had visited, no CDs to depict her taste in music, no DVDs to display her film choices, no perfumes to give you a scent of the woman. Sullivan’s home was a blank canvas, no reflection of her personality, her emotions, her life. Her house was a mirror of what they knew about Susan Sullivan. Nothing.

  Lottie didn’t need to look upstairs again. Detectives Larry Kirby and Maria Lynch would be back. This time they’d do a thorough job. Incompetence was something she could not tolerate. Her detectives we
re better than this. They had to be. And Sullivan’s phone was still missing; their GPS tracking system had failed to turn it up.

  Pulling the front door behind her, it closed with a clunk and she headed for home.

  The arctic breeze had morphed into a howling wind. Snow swirled around Lottie and she picked her steps carefully. She thought of ringing Boyd to collect her, but decided against it. It was getting late and he was more than likely celebrating the end of the old year. She took the short-cut through the dimly lit industrial estate, to avoid the revellers spilling from pubs, tripping on the snowy footpaths with their wine and cigarettes.

  Tall empty industrial units echoed with the wind and electric cables swung dangerously low. Facing into the blizzard she walked rapidly, cursing the elements.

  The first blow caught her in the ribs, knocking her to her knees, winding her. She tried to steady herself but the pain in her side flashed through her body. What was going on? She hadn’t heard anyone approach with the wind.

  The second blow to her back knocked her prostrate on the ice, hands outstretched, desperately grasping for something to hold on to. Her face banged into the ground, a weight securing her down. Her throat constricted as the cord from her jacket hood was pulled tight. She struggled for breath. She was choking. He was on top of her. An image of her children flitted through her brain and the instinct to fight back took hold and her training kicked in.

  She tried to bring her arms upwards, to lean on her elbow, but the assailant was too heavy. She gagged with the metallic taste of blood pooling inside her mouth. With the pain intensifying, anger coursed through her. The attacker was pulling tight on the cord. She gritted her teeth, slid an arm beneath her and swung her other elbow backwards. The hold on her neck loosened and she gulped in the cold air.